


Hitting Rock Bottom

by DoctorTrekLock



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Crack, Gen, Personification, Stone AU, a proper rock au, but not like...a rock music AU, flerkens getting into places they shouldn't, mcuchristmasexchange2020, rock au, where they are actually rocks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28341531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorTrekLock/pseuds/DoctorTrekLock
Summary: Clint isn’t one to rock the boat, but when he finds himself between a rock and a hard place, he might just hit rock bottom. Luckily, even as he’s rocked to his core, he finds that his friends are rock solid.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: MCU Christmas Exchange





	Hitting Rock Bottom

**Author's Note:**

  * For [endrega_Turtlesse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/endrega_Turtlesse/gifts).



> Happy MCU Holiday Exchange, Turtlesse! You said you were up for crack and creative aus, and I ran with it. 😊 Hope you enjoy!
> 
> As always, thanks for the beta ImprobableDreams900.

_Sixteen sea lions_ , Thor guessed.

 _Twelve giant killer praying mantises_ , Sam ventured.

 _A metric ton of—_ Bucky started to drawl, but Tony cut him off.

 _Giant and killer? Or giant-killer?_ he demanded.

 _What?_ Sam asked blankly.

_Are they killer praying mantises that are giant? Or do they kill giants?_

_How am I supposed to—_ Sam cut himself off. _Um…giant-killer. Twelve praying mantises that kill giants._

 _Oh, okay,_ Tony replied. _No._

 _So it’s a dozen very large killer praying mantises?_ Sam asked incredulously.

 _Nope!_ Tony thought smugly. _Next!_

_Then what was even the point of making me—_

_Shut it, cuprite, it’s my turn,_ Bucky cut in. _And my guess is a metric ton of sand dollars._

 _Nope, nope, aaaaaaaand nope!_ Tony declared gleefully. _Everyone give up yet?_

As much as Clint was enjoying watching the latest round of guess-what-Tony-spotted-on-Fury’s-computer, he knew he’d enjoy winning the game more.

 _It was two llamas, a miniature schnauzer, and two bushels of carrots_ , Clint thought firmly, pitching his mental voice to be heard over the others’ grumbling. Thor always was a sore loser.

 _You son of a lava flow_ , Tony swore. _You’re in the back and you’re such a little pipsqueak; how do you always know the answer?_

 _I thought I was the only one with good_ eye _sight,_ Darcy chimed in, the old joke evident in her emphasis. She was, after all, the only one of them with an eye. It was small and googly and glued on with slightly too much hot glue, but it was more than the rest of them had.

Clint scoffed. _You’re one to talk. You’re, what, four centimeters tall?_

 _Four and a half_ , Tony snapped. He couldn’t move—none of them could—but Clint could imagine Tony drawing himself up as much as he could, trying to eke out even the slightest bit more height. It didn’t help. Tony was going to be a 4.3-cm-tall piece of banded granite studded with garnets no matter what he tried.

A flurry of Russian curses suddenly flew through their collective mindspace. Clint’s attention snapped toward the other end of the shelf. _What is it?_

_That damn cat is in here!_

There was an immediate uproar from the rest of the shelf.

Clint tried to get a look at the cat, but he couldn’t move any better than Tony could. It didn’t help that the last time Fury had rearranged his collection Clint had been placed behind Thor’s bulk, right on the end of the shelf. There was only a six-inch gap between him and the window in the adjacent wall.

As much as Clint might love Thor, it really was quite hard for a small, nondescript hunk of igneous rock like himself to see anything around a large, iridium-rich iron meteorite. There was absolutely no way he could see the dainty, knife-sharp chunk of sleek obsidian on the far side of the shelf that was his best friend.

 _What’s happening?_ Steve asked quickly. Clint knew that the block of petrified wood had also been pushed to the back of the shelf after the last dusting, and he didn’t like being out of the loop, especially when it came to any potential dangers to the shelf.

 _Just nosing around at the moment_ , Carol thought cautiously. The slip of polished amber was one of Fury’s favorite pieces, which always earned her a spot up front.

 _The door must not have latched properly when Fury left_ , Natasha surmised. _You know he’s always distracted before budget meetings._

 _I’m telling you, it was the llamas,_ Tony joked, but it fell flat, everyone’s attention focused on the cat.

That was when Clint heard the buzzing.

He didn’t have blood, but if he had, he was sure it would have run cold in horror. He stopped trying to see around Thor’s bulk and instead lifted his gaze up. He didn’t have the best vision of everyone on the shelf for nothing. There! On the wall, near the far end of the shelf. A fly.

 _She’s coming this way_ , Carol warned them, a note of alarm creeping into her tone.

Clint heard a faint noise. First, it sounded like a rapid-fast meow. Just a couple quick chirps. Then a sort of clicking, chattering sound, interspersed with more chirping. Clint hadn’t heard the sound before, but it was definitely coming from Goose, and that couldn’t bode well.

 _What’s that noise?_ Rhodey asked with a hint of trepidation.

 _She’s watching something_ , Natasha thought slowly. _Something up here._

 _There’s a fly_ , Clint informed the shelf with dread. _Right above Natasha._

 _She can’t get up here, though, right?_ Darcy asked anxiously. _We’re too high off the ground._

 _Right_ , Bucky confirmed, not sounding confident.

 _Didn’t Fury move a guest chair to the wall over here though?_ Carol thought slowly. _So she could jump onto that first._

The fly buzzed. The chattering sound grew nearer.

 _Oh no_ , Sam thought, his horror evident.

That’s when Goose pounced.

She was light on her feet, but the shelf still trembled as the cat alit on it. Clint only caught a hint of orange fur in the corner of vision, but the faint vibration that went through his structure was unmistakable. Bruce actually clattered slightly. The chunk of crystal sulfur was large, but he didn’t have a flat base and teetered back and forth between a couple of his protrusions.

 _What’s she doing?_ Steve asked in alarm, his frustration with his inability to help clear in his voice.

 _She’s standing right over me_ , Sam shot back, but Clint could hear his terror.

Just beyond Thor and Steve, Clint could see the tip of one of Goose’s ears and, beyond that, the end of her tail as it lashed back and forth. She was on the opposite end of the shelf from him, near Natasha, standing over Sam.

As he watched, her tail dipped out of sight, and then she pushed herself up onto her back paws, slamming her front paws on the wall where the fly had been an instant before.

 _Jesus Christ_ , Sam swore faintly as another vibration rattled through the shelf.

Goose meowed in frustration and dropped her front paws back to the shelf. The movement must have brushed Bruce, because Clint watched the top of the large green crystal wobble. Goose adjusted her position as she looked around for the fly. Bruce wobbled again as Goose shifted, the movement stronger this time.

 _Stop that!_ Carol demanded angrily. Goose, of course, didn’t listen.

 _Does anyone know how to make her go away?_ Bruce thought loudly. He sounded calm, but Clint could hear the tension threaded through every word. Bruce had a hair-trigger temper on the best of days, and this most assuredly was not the best of days.

 _We could try—_ Tony started, but broke off. _Shit_.

 _What is it?_ Darcy squealed.

Clint didn’t need to ask. He could still just see Bruce’s top edge over Steve’s bulk, and it was obvious that Goose had found a new favorite toy. Bruce wasn’t just teetering back and forth now—he was actually moving, scraping his edges on the shelf as he spun in place under Goose’s paws.

 _Get that cat out of here!_ Bruce roared impotently.

That’s when Clint heard it again. A faint buzzing sound that drew lazily nearer. He swore.

 _What’s she doing?_ Rhodey asked suspiciously.

Clint had just spotted the fly in the air, but at Rhodey’s words he looked past it toward the other end of the shelf. Goose had apparently also heard the insect. He could see her whole head now as she braced her paws on top of Bruce to get a better look over him. Her eyes were fixed intently on the bug and her tail lashed back and forth behind her.

The fly flew in front of Thor, out of Clint’s line of sight, and landed somewhere, falling silent.

Goose dropped back down to the shelf silently. Clint caught glimpses of orange fur as she wove between the rocks, her tail drawing ever nearer like a flag. She stalked past Bruce, and Clint started to see more and more of her around the rocks in front of him. Her gaze was locked in front of her, on Thor, where the fly must have landed.

All of the rocks on the shelf watched her pad across the surface, tense silence filling their shared mindspace.

About a foot from Thor, Goose halted. By now, Clint had a decent view of her and the unwavering stare she had turned on the fly. Her tail lashed the air. She lowered herself closer to the surface, close enough that the fur of her belly must have been brushing Rhodey.

She wiggled a little and settled herself in a crouch.

 _Hang on,_ Tony interjected quickly. _If she jumps at the fly, isn’t that going to—_

Clint only had an instant to wonder how Tony was going to finish that sentence before he found out firsthand.

Goose pounced, her paws hitting Thor off-center at full speed a millisecond before Thor spun around and crashed straight into him.

Clint went flying. A dense, heavy meteorite can pack a lot of punch and Thor hadn’t been able to hold his inertia back.

He was thrown clean off the shelf. Clint hung in the air for an instant in astonishment before he hit the glass window with a loud _crack!_ and ricocheted off.

He only had a moment to register the size of the room, so much larger than it had looked from above, the shelf growing smaller and smaller, until _snap_ —

Clint hit the ground and his world shattered.

\--

…

_Clint!_

…

…

_Clint???_

…

 _Clinton, you’d better be all right or_ …

… _see him at all?_

… _be he can hear us?_

_Then why doesn’t he answer?_

_Clint!_

Clint snapped back to the present with a jarring suddenness to see a great big pair of green eyes inspecting him from an inch away.

Goose gave him a curious sniff and, evidently disappointed, wandered off. Clint didn’t remember her having jumped down from the shelf and that in and of itself was alarming. Rocks didn’t sleep, and they didn’t die—or, at least, he didn’t think they did. It shouldn’t even have been possible for him to lose time like that.

 _Hey_ , he managed, turning his attention back to the shelf visible above him.

 _Clint!_ The voices came in a chorus of surprise, relief, and worry.

 _—ton_ , finished Tony, who always had to be different.

 _Are you okay?_ Carol called in concern.

 _Tell me you are all right, kamenyochek_ , Natasha demanded.

 _I am truly sorry, my friend_ , Thor lamented. _I did not mean to strike you, and I had no wish to see you hurt in any way. Please accept my sincerest apology._

 _I…_ Clint started. _I_ … The world swam in front of him. It was hard to focus on the shelf where he had been sitting so recently. It was so far away and he was so far from it.

His gaze wandered. He was on the floor of Fury’s office. There was sunshine streaming through the window and falling onto Clint. It was warm and pleasant. Clint had always liked sunshine; it reminded him of the long, hot days he had spent outside before being collected. He had to admit that baking hot summers were much nicer with air conditioning and double-paned windows.

The edges of the furniture were blurry somehow, as if he were seeing everything from multiple different angles at once. Lines that should have been crisp were doubled and tripled into an unfamiliar haze.

His disoriented vision landed on the shape of a chair sitting against the wall, below and a little to the side of the shelf. A hazy orange blob of fur sat on it, Goose apparently unconcerned with anything else in the room as she daintily groomed three paws with three separate but identical pink tongues.

Clint himself, as best as he could tell, was on the floor next to Fury’s desk. He could actually see under it and—huh. Were those overlapping manilla rectangles…file folders taped to the undersides of some of the drawers?

 _Clint!_ Natasha snapped.

 _Huh?_ Clint tried to focus. _What’s up?_

 _What is wrong, rochek?_ Natasha thought forcefully. _Tell me._

 _I…I don’t know_ , Clint thought carefully, focusing on his words. _I don’t know what happened._ He hesitated as the world continued to reel around him in triplicate. _I don’t think I’m okay_ , he added.

It wasn’t an easy admission to make, but it also wasn’t a difficult conclusion to draw. Clint wasn’t sure what had happened to him, but it was impossible to say he hadn’t been affected by his fall.

In the dark recesses of his scattered mind, he thought he already knew what had happened. He pushed it away, though. Fury wouldn’t want a broken piece in his collection, and Clint didn’t want to contemplate what his fate would be if his deepest fears were true.

 _By the Nine Realms, what have I done?_ Thor wailed.

 _Hang in there_ , Bucky thought grimly. _You’ll be okay_.

 _Can anyone see him?_ Steve asked, his voice tight. Steve never talked about what had happened to him before his arrival in Fury’s office, but a few hazy details Bucky had dropped were coming back to Clint. There had been a rockslide, maybe? He’d never really gotten over it.

 _No_ , Carol thought in frustration. _He’s too close to the wall._

 _What’s that over there?_ Darcy piped up.

 _What’s what?_ Carol asked.

_That. Over there; by the chair. Is that—_

_It is_ , Sam thought. His voice was dark, and Clint didn’t want to know what they’d seen. Based on the splintered and shattered feeling that ran throughout him, he already had a pretty good idea, and it terrified him.

 _Oh no_ , Darcy thought quietly.

 _He’ll be fine_ , Tony thought brightly. _Just a touch of epoxy, and he’ll be right as rain in no time_.

A steady drumbeat started up somewhere behind—no, above? beside?—Clint. It was a familiar cadence, but louder than he was used to, and he could feel the vibrations more strongly than he ever had before. Goose’s ears twitched, but she didn’t look up from her spot on the chair. A murmur of voices became apparent just before the office door opened.

“—and once Agent Barton has opposable thumbs again, make sure you get his damn report. I don’t care if you have to pin him to a chair with one of his own goddamn arrows. I want to know how our _backup_ sniper who was supposed to be stationed five blocks away got turned into a damn llama.” Fury had arrived.

“Yes, sir.” The pair of immaculate dress shoes following him into the office could only belong to Coulson.

“And make sure to tell him—” _crunch_

Both men fell silent. Clint could hear the faint whisper of a weapon being readied. Goose leisurely stretched on the chair. There was the slight squeak of a boot sole pivoting on concrete, and dark fingers appeared in Clint’s line of sight as Fury picked up whatever it was he had stepped on. There came the faint scrape of stone on concrete, and then Fury straightened up again.

“Is that…?”

Goose jumped down from the chair and sashayed leisurely past Clint toward where the two men were standing.

Fury’s gaze moved to her in confusion as she padded closer, appearing utterly unconcerned with the destruction she had wreaked. Then, Fury seemed to put it all together.

“You damn _cat_!” Fury roared, making a wild grab for Goose even as she jumped at his voice and bolted for the office door. There were two stumbling steps and the door to the office slammed shut with more force than was strictly necessary. “I don’t care that she can swallow Kree soldiers whole. The next time that flerken gets into my office I’m having her permanently reassigned to R&D.”

Clint watched through the gap under the desk as calm, measured footsteps marked out a trajectory around it. Coulson came into view. “It looks like she got into your collection, sir,” he reported.

“She did _what_?”

Coulson tugged on the front of his trouser legs so he could crouch down over Clint. “I think we’re going to need to get a broom in here,” he murmured, which was not at all comforting.

 _Oh, Clint_ , Carol thought in hushed horror.

Coulson reached out and picked Clint up. And then he reached out and…picked him up again? Clint’s vision went wild with multiple contradictory points of view. Oh no. He _had_ broken into pieces, just as he’d feared. It was one thing to know that was the likely outcome and another to know it had actually happened.

Coulson stood and the world shifted again, every line of sight moving at once, but not in harmonious concert. More like an atonal bagpipe falling down a flight of stairs. He hadn’t even known he could _get_ nauseous. Was this going to be his life now? He despaired at the thought.

“Oh hell,” Fury muttered, taking both the Clints out of Coulson’s hands. He turned the pieces over in his hands, until—if Clint was understanding himself right—Fury was looking at his undersides, the parts of himself that had been hidden from the world until he’d shattered.

 _Shattered_. It was true. He wasn’t going to be set back on the shelf; he was going to be _discarded_ , thrown away like the garbage he was.

Clint heard a couple of the rocks on the shelf gasp. Tony actually gave a wolf whistle.

 _What is it?_ Clint asked in confusion.

“Beautiful coloration,” Coulson commented.

 _You’re a geode_ , Bruce thought softly.

 _What?_ Clint froze.

 _Amethyst_ , Natasha and Fury replied in concert.

“Brazilian,” the director continued.

The world spun in a way that didn’t have anything to do with Fury’s handling of him.

A geode. Could it be true? This whole time, Clint had just figured himself to be exactly what he looked like: a 5.2 cm, roughly spherical hunk of rock. Unremarkable in every way. Geodes, though, weren’t unremarkable at all. They started that way, but once they were burst open, they showed their colorful hidden layers. And amethyst? That meant _purple_. Clint felt himself swell with pride. He might be seeing triple, and he might have fallen a meter and a half to the floor and shattered into pieces, but he was _purple_ on the inside and now everyone could see it. He was _purple_ and _beautiful_ and Fury couldn’t throw him out now, could he?

Coulson’s mouth twitched into a brief smile. “I should have known you’d have a geode on your shelf,” he said. “What with your soft spot for miscreants with hearts of gold.”

Above him, Clint could see Fury turn a stern eye on Coulson. “Need I remind you that somehow you’re always the one begging me to let them stay?”

Coulson’s expression was a little too innocent to be real. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, sir.”

Fury snorted. “Cut the crap, Coulson. If I had a nickel for every wayward assassin you brought me with a hangdog look and a bullet wound, I could build another helicarrier.” He held both of Clint’s halves in one hand and reached up with the other to rearrange the shelf. From what Clint could see, it looked like he was straightening Thor and pushing him back on the shelf to make more room. Was that room for him?

“You exaggerate,” Coulson said as Fury rearranged a few of the other rocks. “You’d be able to buy yourself a cup of black coffee in 1947 and nothing more.”

“With the amount of trouble they cause, I should garnish your wages,” Fury grumbled. Clint found himself abruptly moving through the air as Fury replaced him on the shelf. He was in the front this time, in front of Bucky and Steve and between Darcy and Rhodey.

 _Clint!_ Darcy squealed. _You’re back! You’re okay!_

 _Good to have you back,_ Steve thought.

 _I must most humbly beg your forgiveness,_ Thor professed.

 _Welcome home, sokrovishche,_ Natasha thought warmly.

 _Thanks, guys,_ Clint thought in relief. He let the shelf’s greetings wash over him, hardly believing his good fortune. He hadn't thought he'd make it back up here again. It had been so easy to believe that it was all over for him. Now, as Fury turned away and resumed his conversation with Coulson, Clint gave himself a minute to center and reorient himself. He was still here, against all odds. It could have turned out so, so badly, but it hadn’t, and Clint was back on the shelf where he belonged.

Already the triple vision that had so disoriented him was beginning to fade as he grew accustomed to the relationship between his pieces. It was nearing his accustomed clarity and he was hopeful it would only improve as he settled a little more. Better yet, Clint could see almost the whole office from his new spot, which meant that he was going to _rule_ at Tony’s next round of betting.

A thought occurred to him. _Hey_ , he thought casually, _anyone want to bet on what I saw under Fury’s desk?_

 _Seventeen caterpillars_ , Tony thought firmly.

**Author's Note:**

> Visual references for each of the characters are posted on my tumblr: <https://doctortreklock.tumblr.com/post/638587431142244352/visual-aids-for-the-avengers-in-my-rockau-fic>
> 
> Russian translations:  
> kamenyochek – каменёчек – little stone (diminutive)  
> rochek – рочек – little rock (diminutive)  
> sokrovishche – сокровище – treasure


End file.
